[11] In this example, the functioning is starving but the capability to obtain an adequate amount of food is the key element in evaluating well-being between individuals in the two states.
It presents a methodological reflection (phenomenology versus Kantian thought) with the aim to re-humanise the person, through actions, and through the values and norms that lead to corresponding rights and obligations that must be ordered.
Amartya Sen defines an agent as someone who acts and brings about change, whose achievement can be evaluated in terms of his or her own values and goals.
For example, when a person chooses to engage in fasting, they are exercising their ability to pursue a goal they value, though such a choice may not positively affect physical well-being.
[9] For the purposes of the capability approach, agency primarily refers to a person's role as a member of society, with the ability to participate in economic, social, and political actions.
Concern for agency stresses that participation, public debate, democratic practice, and empowerment, should be fostered alongside well-being.
The compound problem is that freedom in Nussbaum's hands is both given an intrinsic and primary value (a reductive claim), and, at the same time, the list is treated as a contingent negotiated relation in tension with other virtues such as justice, equality and rights.
Also, Sen argues that part of the richness of the capabilities approach is its insistence on the need for open valuational scrutiny for making social judgments.
Instead, Sen argues that the task of weighing various capabilities should be left to the ethical and political considerations of each society based on public reasoning.
The programme of work operationalising the capability approach by Anand and colleagues draws heavily on Nussbaum's list as a relatively comprehensive, high-level account of the space in which human well-being or life quality is experienced.
However, two particular lines of work, in research and policy have sought to show that meaningful indicators of what individuals (and in some cases governments) are able to do can be developed and used to generate a range of insights.
At the same time, and subsequently, researchers recognizing that these three areas covered only certain elements of life quality have sought to develop more comprehensive measures.
Subsequently, Anand and colleagues have developed datasets for the US, UK and Italy in which all the elements of Sen's framework are reflected in data which permits all three key equations, for functionings, experience and capabilities, to be estimated.
In a series of papers, they have shown that both their primary data and some secondary datasets can be used to shed light on the production and distribution of life quality for working age adults, those in retirement, very young children, those vulnerable to domestic violence, migrants, excluded traveler communities and the disabled.
They are nevertheless an important one, since richer economies are better placed to create and maintain other well-being-enhancing conditions, such as a clean environment, the likelihood that the average person will have a right to 10 years or more of education, and lead a comparatively long and healthy life.
Critics in these fields typically discuss gender inequalities, insufficient representation of environmental costs of productions and general issues of misusing an output-based measure for unintended purposes.
In sum, the conclusion of Capabilities Approach is that people do not just value monetary income, and that development is linked to various indicators of life satisfaction and hence are important in measuring well-being.
[28] These activities provide economic benefits, but are not valued in national accounting systems; this suggests that the definition of unemployment used in output-based measures is inappropriate.
[24] Kuznets has often made this point, in his words, "distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns and between the short and long run.
[30] Nussbaum also points out that GNP and GDP omit income distribution and the opportunity or ability to turn resources into activities (this critique stems directly from Capabilities Approach).
The Human Development Index is calculated using the indicators of life expectancy, adult literacy, school enrollment, and logarithmic transformations of per-capita income.
[47] Caution remains when measures do not explicitly rule out people's adaption to their circumstances, for example to physical health problems.
It is evident that these measures are very subjective, but this fact is in the essence of defining quality of life according to Nussbaum and Sen. Nussbaum refers to Sen in saying that, although measures of well-being may be problematic in comparative, quantifiable models due to their subjective matter, the protection of and commitment to human development are too important of matters to be left on the sidelines of economic progress.
[11] Amartya Sen, however, argues this view has three main deficiencies: distributional indifference; neglect of rights, freedoms, and other non-utility concerns; and adaptation and mental conditioning.
Lastly, Amartya Sen makes the argument that the utilitarian view of individual well-being can be easily swayed by mental conditioning and peoples' happiness adapting to oppressive situations.
It stresses the intrinsic importance of rights and freedoms when evaluating well-being, and it avoids overlooking deprivation by focusing on capabilities and opportunities, not state of mind.
Arguably, the main difficulty in a resource- or income-based approach to well-being lies in personal heterogeneities, namely the diversity of human beings.
Additionally, other contingent circumstances which affect what an individual can make of a given set of resources include environmental diversities (in geographic sense), variations in social climate, differences in relational perspectives, and distribution within the family.
Through an education programme a student is able to acquire knowledge, skills, values and understanding and this enables a young person to think in new ways, to ‘be’, to develop agency in society and make decisions.
Hinchcliffe[53] offers a set of capabilities for students of Humanities subjects, including critical examination and judgement, narrative imagination, recognition/ concern for others (citizenship in a globalised world).